JOHN PHILLIP BAMFORTH came of age in the 60s and 70s in the northwest of England. His hometown of Wigan could not have been more white and blue collar. Wigan is an old coal mining town, forged in the industrial revolution, founded on a hard-nosed, straightforward culture brought to life in George Orwell’s book “The Road to Wigan Pier” and best personified by its championship winning rugby team. Growing up, John had no idea how “white” his world was. Most of his encounters with people of color were infused by a level of casual, demeaning and dehumanizing racism across his community that still shocks him today. 

His world opened up, as it does for many, when he went off to college at the University of Bath and later to graduate school at Aston University in Birmingham. He began to make friends with people from an array of backgrounds and developed a deep, life-long interest in other cultures and subcultures which has enriched his academic, professional and personal journey through life. 

With a PhD in neuropharmacology, John joined Eli Lilly in 1989, and focused on building global brands and leading highly engaged and diverse teams. He emigrated to the U.S. in 2001. After retiring from Eli Lilly, he returned to academia to lead Eshelman Innovation at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. This institute is focused on translating the brightest and best ideas on campus into products and services that impact patients. 

ROY STANFORD ZWAHLEN grew up an Army brat. At a time when many career military officers studied Russian, Roy’s father studied Arabic. As a result, Roy spent most of his formative years in the Middle East in Jordan, Turkey, Kuwait and Syria. In this great crossroads of history, civilization, commerce, religion, language and politics, he was exposed to a diversity of cultures that is hard to find in other corners of the world. 

His educational experience was similarly diverse and unusual. Though taught in American schools abroad, his schools were filled with a mix of local students and the children of diplomats from around the world. His daily exposure to different cultures, languages, ideas and people shaped his experience of life. His periodic returns to the U.S. were both exciting and disorienting. Extracted from a mosaic of celebrated cultures, he encountered the challenging need to navigate subtle and not-so-subtle racial and ethnic barriers and divisions in schools. While the Middle East was no paradise, he found that his America had a ways to go to live up to the ideals taught to him by his veteran father and veteran grandfathers. 

At Brigham Young University, he experienced another kind of disorientation when he became immersed for the first time in his own majority religious culture. While he shared a faith with this community, he did not find much commonality with his life experiences or his global view of culture and diversity. This was not unusual for Roy; just unexpected and he loved it. He was drawn to the opportunity of multicultural societies found in subjects like political science, economics, and international affairs studying the history of racism, finance of the Ottoman Empire, and the political history of South Asia. After earning his law degree at George Mason School of Law, he specialized in intellectual property, international trade, public health and economic development. He spent the first half of his career conducting think-tank activities representing the biotech industry advising state, national, and international bodies. After advising governments and industry on best-in-class technology innovation and entrepreneurism development economic models and policy for biotech, he decided to roll up his sleeves and build a model from the ground up.

As the Chief Strategy Officer for Eshelman Innovation, he’s responsible for building and managing strategy, governance, and operations.